Literary Review - August 2007

Page 41

MOP & PAIL

years to come, and in seventeenth-century France not only was the bidet invented but research into the care of teeth became the rage and dentistry became far more sophisticated. And so it needed to, since many people cleaned their teeth so thoroughly with sticks, badly-ground powders and whiteners that they damaged their teeth irreparably. Cleanbecomes particularly interesting as it nears our present day. While we all know that Florence Nightingale transformed medicine by insisting her nurses use scrubbing brushes and concentrate on cleanliness to reduce the death rate at Scutari Hospital in the Crimean War, what I didn’t know was that as a result, in Victorian times, there came a pathological fear of ‘germs’. Constipation became a preoccupation and laxatives were used extensively to avoid the build-up of disgusting, germ-ridden poo in the body. Germs were the great enemy, and that’s why everything had to be boiled until it screamed – resulting in our reputation for overcooking vegetables till they were virtually inedible. Every kitchen saucepan had to be sterilised and work surfaces had to be cleared of ornate fittings. Long skirts were discouraged (at least ones that touched the germ-ridden ground), gloves encouraged, and a clean handkerchief was a must for every day. Contact with anyone else even among family members posed a risk – which might be why for a long time children were rarely hugged or kissed. Smith writes interestingly, too, on the different emotional and spiritual attitudes to cleanliness. ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness,’ goes one saying, and we are always being encouraged to ‘wash away our sins’. In Vedic theology, sweat, saliva, hair and nail clippings, vomit, urine, blood, sperm, faeces and afterbirth were closely monitored, while Egyptian priests were urged to shave their bodies every day to guard against the presence of lice. On the other hand, Saddhus are not known for their bathing habits, except of course in the filthiest river in the world, the Ganges, and Judaeo-Christian asceticism meant that the cleansing of the inner soul was absolutely imperative, whereas the cleaning of the outer body was a worldly distraction. Artists also have often eschewed cleanliness in an effort to convince everyone that they are too busy with their art to bother about bourgeois matters like cleanliness, and very posh aristocrats can have a similar attitude. Too posh

You can never be too clean

to wash, kind of thing. The only area in which this book falls down slightly is in covering the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the most cleanliness-obsessed era of all. We’re constantly being encouraged to detox: we shower every day, have our own bathrooms, slather ourselves in deodorants, moisturise our bodies – so much so that some doctors fear that our obsession with

cleanliness is actually making us ill, encouraging autoimmune diseases, asthma, and allergies. But could the tide be about to turn? The fad for not washing your hair and the ‘grunge’ look may be examples of a rebellion against over-cleanliness. Despite this gap in the book, Cleanis an interesting read which should perhaps be bought to live in the loo – it is a natural ‘bathroom book’, as the Americans coyly call it. To order this book at £13.59, see LR Bookshop on page 37

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LITERARY REVIEW August 2007